|Persuasion Week Three: All about War|

Alongside our persuasion brief from our client we have also been asked to look into another topic to help branch out our research and give us ideas of how we can present our own work for this project. The other topic we have been given is war.

As a briefing group we were given the idea to tackle the word war: as a group we had to differentiate what war meant to us and break down the different segments in which we could research into to create depth to our on going project climate change.

When it comes to group work I’m always quite sceptical as more than often when I am put in a group I have high expectations in order to succeed and gain a decent amount of work to show a client. However sometimes I forget to realise that others have different work ethics to myself and that what I deem as acceptable isn’t always the case.

Within the group work for the war project it was at first quite easily put together as everyone seemed to be happy and work was being evenly distributed. We decided to set up a Pinterest board as a group and a group chat that we could all access and that we could add to at our own leisure. As a group we were always in contact if anything changed or if we had found awn angle that was particularly interesting.

As a group we looked at the many different aspects of war which we had completed a mind-map of in order to be able to visually present this. The different aspects that we found were:

As a group we sat and discussed what we felt best fitted the other project first looking at how we can relate war to the Size of Wales. At first I found this difficult as I couldn’t see how this part of the project created to the Size of Wales brief and found that it was slightly drifting off of topic and that it didn’t work. but when I decided to sit down and really think about it. Anti-war related the most to the Size of Wales. The Size of Wales is a company that help deforestation and have a unique way of hitting climate change. Climate change is what we were doing to the world by polluting the air, ruining homes of the innocent and making many species extinct. this relates back to war well as war kills the innocent destroys homes and destroys the future for many that it effects. Anti-war is helping to avoid this happening to the war just as Size of Wales is doing to defeat climate change and deforestation. Our next step then was to look for media in which the anti-war movement have used and created in order to create the biggest effect on peoples lives.

Different ways in which these could also be presented:

Posters

Billboards

Ad shells

Clothing

Body art

Moving imagery (animation) and more

With our main persuasion project going alongside we decided to tailor the way in which we had picked out our media aspect by how we have interpreted the main brief. I myself have interpreted the brief as a pack and decided to look into charity organisations that are against war and help those whom are effected by it. The main charity in which I looked at was War Child, War Child use a range of different media such as animation, print media and art movements (graffiti).

The imagery in which War Child use is a shock tactic, the imagery is mainly of child like objects such as balloons and learning cards and are given a sickening twist in order to create the lasting effect that would disrupt anyone. one of the main pieces that war child use is actual imagery of children within war settings, this really helps draw the attention of the viewer and allow them to connect and gain a relationship with the child. As humans we have an underlining natural connection with children, understanding that within the age in which these children are its a crucial stage within their development and that they are still vulnerable and easily influenced. This creates a desire to look after and protect the child and therefore draws in the attention a lot quicker.

As well as the imagery being a crucial part of the relationship bond within antiwar persuasion, the typeface and wording used within this advertisements also gain a connection as the main typeface used is a handwriting of a child. This appears more like a cry for help than a standard typeface.

I decided that each member of the group should pick at least three pieces of media that they believed worked as a piece of persuasive advertisement and to also write a piece about why they felt that this worked. This was in order to show the client and get the best possible feedback for why we felt it worked.

The three pieces of media that i felt best portray this was through War Child:

Piece one:

Within this advertisement it shows a child holding a fire-arm against a measurement wall, this is normal procedure when joining the forces however using a child puts the contents into perspective and allows you to connect with the child and creates a relationship instantly.

Piece two:

Within this image it shows a fire-arm built out of balloons. balloons help childlike the element of the gun and create a less serious atmosphere when looking directly at it. However, the lighting and the use of the handwritten typeface really creates a more intense atmosphere. the typeface is portrayed as if it has been written by a child itself.

Piece three;

This image shows the most common children’s development game across the world, the use of the alphabet cards creates an idea of how young the children can be that are affected by war and the age in which they are shown and brought into the war itself. This allows us to create a need and want to look after and protect the child that is unseen from harm.

Putting together the presentation board:

When it came to putting all of our findings together my group became quite distant and weren’t really involved within the process, each member of the group sent three images and a small paragraph of text about each image and weren’t too bothered about how it looked together and how we were going to present the findings to the client. It took many attempts in oder to get my group together to get the presentation ready for the client, after trying to get the group together after the tutorial on the 9th, 10th and the 13th we finally managed an hour group meeting on the Monday the 13th and was only sent the information I had originally asked for before the group them proceeded to leave.

I decided to take it upon myself to put the presentation into a format that would allow for the client to visually see where we started for this project and how we got to the point that we had. With the information that I was given I decided to make up an indesign document that allowed me to first make up format that allowed for diversity and interesting layout design but also allowed for a theme to be put across so that the work looked as if it was a set and worked as a team.

For the first few slides I decided to explain how we had started off the process (including a mind map and screen shots of our Pinterest boards.) and then progressing further to the reasons we felt that the size of wales and antiwar correlated together. on screen and on paper this worked really well to show the client our research on top of what we had been asked by them.

when i had officially put everyones work into the document and made sure of layouts, imagery and text i decided to convert the file to a pdf so that this would be easily printed to be able to put on the board. when it come to printing, i was the person to print off the work and put onto the board ready for the presentation with the client. none of my group were on time and managed to turn up 20 minutes before the client was present. this has put a lot of stress on me due to little help from my group members and trying to create a positive impression on the client.